The Figure In The Carpet Metaphor

Enotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of the figure in the carpet.

The figure in the carpet metaphor.

The figure in the carpet has become a short hand or idiom for the key to understanding a writer s work. James just gives me the impression of being too clever for his own good. I should have known better. The problem of metaphor is inscribed in the oldest critical text of the western literary tradition.

And yet the story in which the idiom was born henry james s 1896 tale the figure in the carpet refuses to open itself up to easy interpretations or analysis. At first sight the story s title seems to have nothing in common with its plot since it deals with a critic s desperate. The narrator a writer prides himself on his astute review of hugh vereker s latest novel. In james s the figure in the carpet the leading metaphor of a figure in a carpet is striking.

Metaphor the authors explain is. Pdf on jan 1 2002 yanna popova published the figure in the carpet find read and cite all the research you need on researchgate. After reading the figure in the carpet i was left shrugging. Nearly every subsequent commentator has found aristotle s terse definition in some way inadequate.

Vereker dismisses his efforts explaining that all critics have missed my little point the particular thing i ve written my books most for the thing for the critic to find my secret like a complex figure in a persian carpet. In a way i understand the joke s on me the reader. I enjoyed the ride and naïvely enough waited for a satisfying unveiling of the mysterious figure in the carpet. The occurring metaphors in both stories make a contribution to the reader s need of detecting the stories meanings.